Wednesday, March 10, 2010

It was a typically cold winter day on February 3, 1968, in the Windy City area. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston of the suburban Chicago town of Northlake were alarmed when the pregnant Mrs. Johnston began experiencing the contractions that could only mean one thing. She was going into labor.

Phillip Johnston and his wife rushed in their car to Columbus Hospital, where their pediatrician was on staff. However, Mrs. Johnston's condition was growing more dire as she began to give birth. Phillip, realizing there was an emergency, stopped at a police station looking for help. A policeman, who was going off duty, said there was nothing he could do to help. Phillip, growing more frantic, flagged down a police car

Police officer Robert Carlson escorted the Johnstons to the closest hospital, Sheridan General. A doctor and nurse at Sheridan told the Johnstons that they would have to drive to Edgewater Hospital, a now-critical mile and a half away, because Sheridan lacked maternity facilities. Officer Carlson was appalled and he told UPI that the doctor at Sheridan "didn't examine the woman or anything . . . he just gave us directions to Edgewater Hospital." Sheridan's chairman of gynecology -- remember that Sheridan said it had no maternity facilities, but had a staff gynecologist -- defended the actions of the Sheridan staff on duty in sending away Mrs. Johnston who was then experiencing childbirth.

The Johnston's experienced their worst nightmare when their precious bundle of joy died at Edgewater Hospital after being born in the backseat of Mr. Johnston's car. The cause of death, according to their pediatrician at Columbus, was a "brain hemorrhage and brain damage because of a lack of oxygen."

But what could have been so important for the Johnston's pediatrician that he could not call Sheridan and demand that they render immediate assistance to his patient?

The Jerusalem-born pediatrician for the Johnstons was an Orthodox Jew who obviously felt that his duties on February 3, the Sabbath, outweighed those to his patient and her baby. And one could reasonably ask what the life of an infant girl on a cold Chicago day back in 1968 meant to a former terrorist for the Israeli Zionist terror gang Irgun Zvai Leumi who participated in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, killing 91 innocent Britons, Arabs, and Jews and wounding 46 others.

Later, the Chicago pediatrician who barely lifted a finger to help the Johnstons save the life of their infant daughter, would gloat in the appointment of his son as the chief of staff to the most important office holder in the world, the president of the United States. Remarking on his son's total commitment to Israel, the retired pediatrician declared that his son would "influence the president to be pro-Israel," adding, "Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House."

Emulating his father's poor bedside manners, the son would refer to liberal Democrats as "fucking retarded" and Washington, DC as "fucknutsville." The Chicago pediatrician's other son would be pulled from a senior position at the National Institutes of Health to advise the White House on health care reform and push a system favorable to the insurance industry.

After his son became White House chief of staff, the Chicago pediatrician's entry would disappear from Wikipedia. Two of the pediatrician's sons would become key players in health care reform and push for the same type of aloof and detached medical care that the Johnstons experienced first hand from their primary pediatrician provider.

The pediatrician whose three sons became powerful in politics, medicine, and Hollywood is none other than Benjamin Emanuel, the father of President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, White House health care adviser Ezekiel Emanuel, and Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel. Meanwhile, in an all-but-forgotten Chicago grave lies the infant daughter of the Johnstons.